Round length

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Re: Round length

Post by oranges » #471755

Bottom post of the previous page:

Phony_Name wrote:Perhaps consult with the headmins of the various servers to implement a test scenario for longer/shorter rounds - I've noticed Bagil has skewed shorter than Sybil lately so perhaps require minimum roundlengths on Sybil to see how it works out?
All three of our servers are under the same headadmins? Did you mean the downstreams?
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Re: Round length

Post by John_Oxford » #471779

i logged back into my account just to type this citrusfag

you could make the minimum shuttle call time adaptive to the following variables.

-round type (shorter minimum call time for explosive rounds, like wizard, blob, ect)
-previous round length (if the shuttle was called because calling conditions were met before the timer expired last round, the shuttle timer would be longer by a few minutes, and for every minute the shuttle wasn't called after the expire timer, two seconds would be added to the shuttle timer the following round)
-average of all previous round lengths in a 24 hour period previously.

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Re: Round length

Post by confused rock » #471925

Horrible idea: what if the shuttle always came at a specific point in time based on the round type that could be delayed at a comms console, then people would put more effort into survival and repairs if they knew they'd have to stick around on the station for a while longer. for people really antsy for another round they can just server hop.
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Re: Round length

Post by oranges » #471929

I don't want to make it a specific round to allow for rounds to go on for longer, I just want a baseline minimum.
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Re: Round length

Post by confused rock » #471934

no I mean depending on the round as in it'd come at 30 for nuke ops but more or less it always comes at a certain interval but not a specific "long round round type"
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Re: Round length

Post by MisterPerson » #471955

confused rock wrote:no I mean depending on the round as in it'd come at 30 for nuke ops but more or less it always comes at a certain interval but not a specific "long round round type"
That's a solution for rounds going too long. People are complaining about the opposite problem, they're too short.
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Re: Round length

Post by confused rock » #472111

No, I mean let's say for example that the shuttle by default will dock with the station in an hour on most roundtypes, and comms consoles allow people to postpone the launch.
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Re: Round length

Post by Cobby » #472119

Have you seen blob during round end and the surprising amount of people that just AFK in the shuttle?
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Re: Round length

Post by MGP » #472348

I don't disagree with the idea that rounds should be longer than they currently are but introducing an arbitrary minimum round length is not the way to handle things. The shuttle is always called when it is for a reason, either for IC or OOC reasons. Making it so that the round has to be at least forty minutes long means that in a lot of cases people are being forced to play the current round when they'd rather it ended fifteen minutes ago. As a result a significant amount of players will either tune out or burn out which is obviously not a good thing. Instead the mechanics of the game itself should be altered such that the result is naturally higher round times. There are a few problems that make it so the shuttle is called early frequently.

Destruction is too easy.
The destructive potential of any random player is very high. When multiple players with destructive tendencies act in parallel it results in a lack of order that incentives heads of staff to call the shuttle. For example, in an average round it is not uncommon for half of all departments to be broken into. The idea that in such a situation security could arrest all criminals for trespassing, breaking and entering, vandalism, and theft is ridiculous. Security knows this and it contributes to the overall feeling of a lack of order, and thus more reason for a shuttle call.

This problem can be tackled in a few ways, though I would suggest all be tried in combination. The availability of tools should be dialed back extensively. Public tools should be almost entirely removed, cargo tools should be ID locked, and only jobs that actually require tools to function should have round start access to tools. The same availability reductions should also be instated for insulated gloves and welding helmets/goggles. Airlocks should not be able to be destroyed except with explosives. Hacking doors should not be nearly as easy as it is now. Wires on all doors should be randomized. Welding without a mask/goggles should make you go blind much faster, go blind immediately, or just not be possible at all. Either more areas on the station should have reinforced walls (the brig especially) or the process of deconstructing a regular wall should be made more time consuming and difficult. Reinforced windows should act more like real life tempered glass does (i.e no breaking with sheer brute force) and should be much more robust. I think a combination of all of these changes would be enough to significantly reduce the damage done by greytiders and thus extend the life of an average round.

Antagonists antagonize too early
Based on my experience a good amount of antagonists start their antagonizing as soon as the round starts. Traitors aren't so much traitors as they are unhinged murderers let loose on the station. No attempt is made by most traitors to actually act as a crew member, they instantly go loud and blow their cover. Thus most of the tension happens towards the beginning of the round as traitors blow their loads and succeed in killing the entire station, or get shut down within the first ten minutes. There is a lack of action or excitement afterwards and a desire to start a new round so it can all start over again. If you could shift the traitor activation phase down a good ten minutes or so you could solve this problem.

As for the solution, this is much more difficult than station fragility. One possible idea is to add a delay to the purchasing of items on the uplink. Either telecrystals would be deposited every few minutes or so until 20 was reached, or purchasing would be forbidden until a certain mark had been passed. I do not claim that this is the best solution to the problem however. Perhaps someone with more creativity can take a shot at it.

Calling the Shuttle As Meta
Certain game modes like Cult or Nuke Ops strongly incentivize calling the shuttle as soon as possible. So long as timing out the opposition remains a viable (or perhaps the most viable?) tactic then the round length will be rather short. I'm not sure what you're supposed to do about this. Cult in theory could be rebalanced (though in my opinion it is broken as a concept, magic revs) but for Nuke Ops it pretty much always makes sense to call the shuttle. Is this really a problem in these round types?

Lastly we have...RP, but I'll write that later.
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Re: Round length

Post by MisterPerson » #472359

If the round type encourages calling the shuttle ASAP and we don't want people to call the shuttle ASAP, the only solution is to change the round type.
confused rock wrote:No, I mean let's say for example that the shuttle by default will dock with the station in an hour on most roundtypes, and comms consoles allow people to postpone the launch.
I got that, I just don't see how limiting the length of the round is going to increase the length of a round.

For the record I like the idea though because I personally hate overly long round and feel that sticking more structure into rounds will make them more consistent, which should make them easier to manage, which should make them better if anyone actually manages them.
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Re: Round length

Post by Dr_bee » #472436

MisterPerson wrote:If the round type encourages calling the shuttle ASAP and we don't want people to call the shuttle ASAP, the only solution is to change the round type.
Remove cult. We only need one conversion mode.

Nuke ops can be switched to war ops only, so no one starts a project during that roundtype.

Wizard is another beast entirely that I dont even know how to make a decent length outside of mulligan being turned back on.
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Re: Round length

Post by MGP » #472448

To finish off my previous post.

RP

Despite what Goof says, a higher standard for RP actually does result in longer round times. RP should not be enforced from an administrative perspective, but elements should be added or removed from the game to encourage stronger roleplaying. What makes SS13 special is that it is at its core a very social game. To be frank the "single player" content of SS13 is usually a very lackluster progression towards tools that allow for various jobs to more effectively kill or grief others. Except unlike in other single player games progress is reset every time the round ends. Now imagine that you're supposed to do the exact same thing over and over again, effectively replaying the same game thousands of times. It's not very compelling or interesting beyond the first few times. The strengths of the game are the stories and experiences created by interacting with other people in a unique environment. Human beings add an infinite amount of variation to the possible round events. To forget this fact and turn your back on RP is the biggest mistake that can be made. When rounds consistently enter formulaic and predictable territory is when the game truly suffers.

When the line between IC and OOC is as blurred as it is, no meaningful interaction occurs. When there are no novel meaningful interactions between players, rounds become disposable and interchangeable. Relationships built within a round are a soft incentive to encourage longer rounds, as round destruction results in a social death. Nobody wants to see the round end before a character arc has reached its conclusion. Immersion itself is another soft incentive to increasing round lengths. If a player is truly immersed in the setting, they start to think less in an OOC manner and more in an IC manner. This results in less shuttle calls for OOC reasons, which despite appearances, are the cause of a fair amount of shuttle calls. Immersion reducing elements should be removed, and greater care should be made to include elements that add to the atmosphere of the game.

You very much have the right idea in your other thread Oranges where you seek to make death and injury more meaningful. That is a very good change to make and will help the problem significantly. In my opinion, to increase immersion, you could stand to reduce the wackiness and silliness by a degree or two. It is hard to believe you are actually on an elite secret research station when there is so much, to be frank, retarded bullshit. Sound, lighting/visuals, and certain game mechanics should receive a lot of minor updates. For example, more sounds should be added to combat, realistic sounds, not cartoony bullshit. Sound is one of the easiest yet most effective ways of adding more immersion to the game, and should be largely inoffensive to most players. I would argue another very important aspect of immersion (though I doubt anyone will listen to me so I will not spend too much time on this) is an actual functional command and security staff. Again, it is very hard for anyone to be truly immersed in a setting, when any random female 17 year old assistant can succesfully disarm the elite carefully selected Head of Security of his advanced energy gun. Where any random assistant can perform an extremely precise surgery, where any random person can do any random thing. You should consider as a long term goal, implementing a basic stats system to add more combat depth and even out game balance a little more.
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Re: Round length

Post by somerandomguy » #472454

MisterPerson wrote:If the round type encourages calling the shuttle ASAP and we don't want people to call the shuttle ASAP, the only solution is to change the round type.
confused rock wrote:No, I mean let's say for example that the shuttle by default will dock with the station in an hour on most roundtypes, and comms consoles allow people to postpone the launch.
I got that, I just don't see how limiting the length of the round is going to increase the length of a round.

For the record I like the idea though because I personally hate overly long round and feel that sticking more structure into rounds will make them more consistent, which should make them easier to manage, which should make them better if anyone actually manages them.
The point is that it will only be called after an hour
i.e. all rounds are at least an hour
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Re: Round length

Post by MisterPerson » #472461

Self, this is why it's important to actually read ideas instead of just assuming I "got the gist of it" and "understand it completely". Haha.

If we could basically ensure that the station is still functional for about 40 minutes, then honestly I think this kind of structure would be fantastic. Without that kind of guarantee however, we'd potentially wind up in a situation where everyone playing doesn't want to play anymore. Imagine if the whole station goes to shit in the first 15 minutes. Like the kind of damage where if you leave the room you're in, you risk dying (lots of bombings, bigass fire, murderboning traitors, ash drake on the station, w/e). So either you leave and die, stay in a room doing nothing not having any fun. or exit the server outright. In all three cases, nobody is doing anything but we still have to wait another 40 minutes for the round to end. While absolutely nothing happens. People already complain about longass rev rounds and frankly I'm concerned about the same issues cropping up but in ALL rounds occasionally.

EDIT: @MBP: Players would literally riot if we ever violated the cardinal rule of "anyone can do anything as equally well as anyone else" (mInus antags and very minor fluff things). At least last time someone ran a poll on the issue, you were on the wrong end of a 70-30 split. I say this even though I would love to see stuff that violates that rule myself.
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Re: Round length

Post by Horza » #472521

MGP wrote:Making it so that the round has to be at least forty minutes long means that in a lot of cases people are being forced to play the current round when they'd rather it ended fifteen minutes ago.
Which is why recall griffing can be so utterly aggravating to the ever-growing base of ghosts that it becomes ahelp-worthy and results in metagrudges. This is true.
Destruction is too easy.
The destructive potential of any random player is very high. When multiple players with destructive tendencies act in parallel it results in a lack of order that incentives heads of staff to call the shuttle.
Which is the entire point of SS13. You're just some random spessmen trying to do your job when suddenly the clown bursts in and chops your fucking head off before you can react. Or maybe you know your coworker is acting seedy and is only making explosive grenades or adding plasma to distro or setting up the SME in a bizarre way. That's part of the fun. Remove the destructive potential and you have a bunch of idiots just walking around doing nothing, getting bored, unable to burn their own hands on the stove, and waiting for traitors to spice their lives up. Nothing needs to be done about this, because allowing destructive potential for any player means that the same destructive potential can be accessible by traitors. The only thing stopping some random crew member from blowing up half the station is the threat of permaban, and that's just fine. Because the more comfortable they are with the mechanics, the better they will be as traitors, leading to amazing traitor situations where they do more damage than all the 20+TC traitors, yet only use readily-accessible resources or their own departmental privileges. It's a badge of honor. Hence that BADASS icon when a traitor gets greentext and uses no TC. Nerfing destructive potential by any one crew member is simply the wrong way to go.
Antagonists antagonize too early
Based on my experience a good amount of antagonists start their antagonizing as soon as the round starts. Traitors aren't so much traitors as they are unhinged murderers let loose on the station. No attempt is made by most traitors to actually act as a crew member, they instantly go loud and blow their cover.
To some extent, yes. It's a feedback loop depending on the common sentiment of the server. I know I've have traitor rounds in just the right role and just the right context to make a great 1+ hour round full of intrigue and betrayal and sneaky but complete victory, but then some traitor successfully goes loud in the first 10 minutes, blows up half the station, gets no resistance at all, and the shuttle's called in the first half-hour. My plans are shot, and all I can do is try to cause mayhem and just brute-force that ebin greentext. Is this a problem with destructive potential or TC balance? In most cases, save for le ebin desword+ebow combo, no. It's a problem with the mindset of traitors. Some people just want to make spessmen go sideways, nothing more. This is where server temperament comes up and all the social feedback loops.
As for the solution, this is much more difficult than station fragility.
No, it's not. On Sybil and Terry, traitor rounds can last 2+ hours on the regular. Why? Because the traitors are generally high-skill players who care more about entertainment and gimmick value rather than making pixel spaceman go horizontal. That's the beginning and end of it.
Calling the Shuttle As Meta
Certain game modes like Cult or Nuke Ops strongly incentivize calling the shuttle as soon as possible.
Nothing needs to be changed about the shuttle save for player attitudes and admin policy. The entire reasoning behind the calls-must-have-a-stated-reason system was to avoid shitty calls like "it's 30 minutes in and Ian is bored, let's go home". But recall griefing is real and too lightly punished. Nothing else needs to be changed.
Despite what Goof says, a higher standard for RP actually does result in longer round times. RP should not be enforced from an administrative perspective
Yes, it should come from the playerbase. Hence why the three servers have stratified into Bagil TDM-fest, Terry mRP 4-hour rounds, and the happy medium in Sybil where rounds can be 30m-2h. Sybil is a comfortable medium, and if Bagil has to be the Designated Shitting Street, then so be it.
but elements should be added or removed from the game to encourage stronger roleplaying.
No, no, a thousand times no. Bagil, Sybil, and Terry operate on exactly the same codebase. The only difference is the type and amount of players. Even Sybil gets Bagil-tier around 50 players, but it really shines at 30-40 players. Terry has its own magic with user counts of ~20. The real magic, to me, of the /tg/station code is that it can handle this vibrant multicultural diversity. Servers like Goon and Lifeweb are centered around lowpop and servers like Hippie and Paradise are centered around highpop. The mechanics break down rapidly under different contexts, and the /tg/ code is still robust enough to handle varied counts. Nothing needs to be done to the code, concerning roleplaying via hardcoding or mechanics. The utter backlash against hygiene should prove that much.
Immersion
These paragraphs ultimately boil down to this word which is so shakily defined as per your usage that it's meaningless. People don't care about immersion when they go to /tg/station. They care about the lackadaisical attitude that's common-sense enough to not need heavy-handed rules. The interplay between IC and OOC is comfortable and flexible enough where icky-ocky is a meme and nothing more. There's certainly cases of powergaming but almost entirely centered around greytiders, which, on a long-enough timescale of consistent characters, gets metagrudged to the point of banning. It's fine as-is.
In my opinion, to increase immersion, you could stand to reduce the wackiness and silliness by a degree or two. It is hard to believe you are actually on an elite secret research station when there is so much, to be frank, retarded bullshit.
That's because the magic of SS13, in the words of some fucking neato shitter on the internet somewhere, is that SS13 is like a realistic cartoon. It's a casserole of settings and genres and movies and books and shows and works. You're affected by hunger, temperature, pressure, radiation, disease, madness, brain damage, body damage, but there's also threats like a wizard from the Wizard Federation. He might animate objects to come alive and attack you. You can manipulate atmospheric mixes and pressures, but you also have the threat of a god-like being invading your station. You can fine-tune chemistry mixes to take advantage of biological half-lives, but you're also being fucked over by a plague of magical monsters from the Xenobio shitters. Every round feels different, like with cultists, or traitors, or revs, or it's nothing but a greenshift where all conflict comes from your interaction with others and the challenges the station faces. It's at a nice happy middle ground. That's the magic of it. Nobody cares about immersion, just about the experience and fun they get from a given round. If they wanted IMMERSIVE ROLE-PLAYING they'd just go over to Baystation 12 and roleplay their go-nowhere janitor or their miserable doctor. Simple. But /tg/station strikes a happy balance.


Ultimately round length depends on a mutual, communal agreement on how long it should be, and on the population of a given server. Sybil and Terry are what all of these weird "let's make round lengths longer" proposals are trying to aim towards, but the mechanics and code are exactly the same, it's only the playerbase that's different. The only way to modify the playerbase is to change the player count, or change the admin policy. Whether it's by opening up another server for full no-RP DM Designated Shitting Server like Sybil 3.0/Bagil 2.0, or simply driving away enough shitters via admin policy, then those are the only real methods without driving away everyone or changing /tg/station into something nobody wants.
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Re: Round length

Post by MGP » #472539

Remove the destructive potential and you have a bunch of idiots just walking around doing nothing, getting bored, unable to burn their own hands on the stove, and waiting for traitors to spice their lives up...
When I talk about removing destructive potential, I made it clear that I was not talking about grenades, plasma, or bombs. I'd advise you reread what I wrote as you are attacking a strawman of my position. The problem I was describing is that using the most rudimentary and easily accessible tools any random person can cause extensive destruction on the station. When multiple people act in parallel, that is, multiple greytiders do their thing uncoordinated, the result is massive destruction greater than or equal to that of an actual antagonist. This destruction leads to a sense of loss of order far too great to sustain the current round and the shuttle is called as a result. Special more difficult to obtain tools like the ones you described would not touched. You don't need to be "comfortable with mechanics" to spam click windows, airlocks, etc. You're trying to paint extensive greytide griefing as some sort of training for being a traitor, which it really isn't. In fact, it cannot be so, because most of the things that you'd want to do as a traitor with TC or not are just outright bans as a non antagonist. The point of the game isn't to cause destruction. Cancerous beliefs like that being touted as some sort of truth will only will attract the worst kinds of players and you know it.
Some people just want to make spessmen go sideways, nothing more...
I agree with you that for the most part you cannot change the fundamental nature of a person's play style, but I'm not sure it's the smartest thing to do to condemn an entire server as hopeless. Personally I do not think that Basil has reached HippieStation or Nox levels. Change to the mechanics of the game can restrain unwanted behaviors to the extent necessary to reach the desired effect. I will also admit that I'm not sure if the differences in play style you describe are imagined or real. I've not played too many rounds on Sybil. It's entirely possible that you're wrong and that Sybil suffers from the same problems, but I'm not sure. I'll take your word for it but I'll check it out myself.
Nothing needs to be changed about the shuttle..(in regards to Shuttle as Meta)
I actually agree, I don't think it's a problem. I don't think anything should be changed.
Nothing needs to be done to the code, concerning roleplaying via hardcoding or mechanics. The utter backlash against hygiene should prove that much.
Maybe it's my fault for not making things clear, but the changes to the game I suggest are not changes in the same sense as the hygiene change. The nature of the changes I suggest are purely aesthetic changes that effect immersion. I pointed out sound as a prime example. Would anyone really get upset for example that lockers would theoretically have a sound that plays when they are locked or unlocked? There's no need to pretend that the definition of words like atmosphere and immersion are unclear. Unless you've lived a rather dull life, you've experienced some piece of art that you in your own words would describe in similar terms. Saying that immersion shouldn't be goal because it's an aesthetic experience that is difficult to articulate is like saying that beauty shouldn't be a goal for architects because it is similarly hard to articulate. Like beauty, immersion is a good unto itself. Nobody doesn't like not being immersed. Particularly not in a roleplaying game.

As a brief aside, Lifeweb is not "low-pop" it sustains a near constant 55 population no matter what, as there is a cap to the amount of people that join and a high demand to join the one of two servers. HIppie is near dead and barely sustains 30 players most of the time. These errors makes me doubt your assessment of Sybil and the other /tg/ servers. If you got that wrong, who knows what else you got wrong.

Anyway let's continue.
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Re: Round length

Post by oranges » #472999

The problem I have is that every change I approve that makes things take longer is met with screeching about how they can't do anything at all in the 20 minute basil rounds and I'm literally hitler.

It's not productive for my mental health, at least if I could turn around and say, minimum 45 minutes, then at least their screeching can be ignored.
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Re: Round length

Post by Whoneedspacee » #473146

MisterPerson wrote:Self, this is why it's important to actually read ideas instead of just assuming I "got the gist of it" and "understand it completely". Haha.

If we could basically ensure that the station is still functional for about 40 minutes, then honestly I think this kind of structure would be fantastic. Without that kind of guarantee however, we'd potentially wind up in a situation where everyone playing doesn't want to play anymore. Imagine if the whole station goes to shit in the first 15 minutes. Like the kind of damage where if you leave the room you're in, you risk dying (lots of bombings, bigass fire, murderboning traitors, ash drake on the station, w/e). So either you leave and die, stay in a room doing nothing not having any fun. or exit the server outright. In all three cases, nobody is doing anything but we still have to wait another 40 minutes for the round to end. While absolutely nothing happens. People already complain about longass rev rounds and frankly I'm concerned about the same issues cropping up but in ALL rounds occasionally.

EDIT: @MBP: Players would literally riot if we ever violated the cardinal rule of "anyone can do anything as equally well as anyone else" (mInus antags and very minor fluff things). At least last time someone ran a poll on the issue, you were on the wrong end of a 70-30 split. I say this even though I would love to see stuff that violates that rule myself.
This is why I want to make VR a ghost thing with minigames and prototype gamemodes and such. It’s really wasted potential having it be a non ghost only one type of vr map per round with an emag function that basically renders the only reason to use vr worthless. VR really needs a massive overhaul which is what I’m gonna try to do after the megafauna vr thing gets merged.

Some people like that struggle in an unliveable station and I think it’s necessary for something I find fun in ss13. This is a much easier compromise I think than editing how people play ss13.
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Re: Round length

Post by confused rock » #473809

I want the ghost role research station to be a place to test shit like new mechanics and items and health systems on a smaller scale.
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Re: Round length

Post by oranges » #474310

I think what I'm going to do is just start targeting a 1 hour minimum round length, and make all design decisions based on that.

I expect this will cause basil people to feel short shifted, but that's on them and their playstyle.
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Re: Round length

Post by Lumbermancer » #474319

Search for my idea for Extended+. Longer rounds, but with antags.
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Re: Round length

Post by Shadowflame909 » #474369

oranges wrote:I think what I'm going to do is just start targeting a 1 hour minimum round length, and make all design decisions based on that.

I expect this will cause basil people to feel short shifted, but that's on them and their playstyle.


Basil's high pop isn't the only reason station become unlivable. Ala syndibombs, kudzu, engineering delams, plasma fires, xenobiology's sentient spiders, megafauna, cargo delams, xenomorphs, virologists, all that all that.


My point is, every job department has a round-ending tool. Some tools earlier, some later. I just don't think it'd be fair to have players suffer so you don't hear complaints about rounds being so short.
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Re: Round length

Post by nullbear » #475869

To reduce early explosions, you could have it so that tatortots start with less TC, and get 1tc every 10 minutes or something.

Could have emergency shuttle only be called if certain alert level is reached (requiring two people to agree, instead of the popular: "as captain I'm about to go afk, so I'm calling the shuttle.'

Or a twist on what has been suggested here already: when the shuttle is called, start a delay vote. Delay or even deny the shuttle based on how many people vote to delay it. If 50% want to delay it, then have centcomm reply ICly and deny the shuttle call.
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Re: Round length

Post by Shadowflame909 » #475877

That gaining 1 tc over time idea sounds pretty good.

But I feel like they won't be able to do much, considering the crew has mechs and really powerful items 1 hour in.

I'd make them start at 8 instead, and slowly gain 1 tc.
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Re: Round length

Post by nullbear » #475883

I've seen a couple suggestions for: "5tc per completed objective" as well.
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Re: Round length

Post by oranges » #475916

some interesting thoughts here, I'll have to have a think about that.
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Re: Round length

Post by nullbear » #475981

MGP wrote:RP
-snip-
Some level of persistence can be an interesting way of getting this result. If by reaching a certain point in your department project, you get to have a lasting impact on the next several rounds, you'll likely have more people trying to complete
their long-term objectives. As MGP said, while having your progress reset each round adds to replayability, it also incurs a sense of pointless labour. After you min-maxed the engine 3-4 times, you stop doing it, and just revert to the fastest and easiest setup. Having some small level of persistence could go a long way in changing that number from interacting with the PvE 3-4 times, to potentially infinitely more, if each time has a lasting consequence on the server. This could go the same for negative consequences. ex. Station is blown up a few times, cargo is borderline bankrupt the whole game, all of the resources mined are used to build floor tiles. Maybe next round you open an emergency locker to find that it hasn't been re-supplied since last round, the vending machines are running out of stock because the janitor hasn't been stocking them. Etc. Etc. Little things like that. But this is a bigger project for a different time.
Lumbermancer wrote:Search for my idea for Extended+. Longer rounds, but with antags.
^ On that note: Instead of starting the round with 4 traitors, each getting 5tc +1 every 5 minutes. Try starting with LESS round-start antags altogether. I'm not saying less antags, i'm suggesting letting the station develop a little bit before introducing the chaos. In this case it'd be more like traitors starting with NO Tc, and getting a new objective w/tc every 15 minutes. Or adding a few ghost-role antags that can only be activated after a certain amount of time has already passed. Wiznerd? doesn't spawn until 15 minutes in. It'll also further incentivise people joining in mid-round if there's a chance they'll get a rare antag that's normally reserved for round-start only.
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Re: Round length

Post by Razharas » #476875

People already mentioned the case of everything being too easy to tamper with(both station and players) and it is true and at least player part of it hopefully will be solved by the complete rework of the medsystem to be more complex to both damage and heal

The interactions in general being too casual can be solved by exactly restricting players ability to do everything, as in by interactions with kinds of machinery or cetrain actions requiring such a thing as proficiency
I dont propose complex skill systems with xp and shit, but lets say 2 gradations of 0 - "i have no idea what am i doing" and 1 - "i know what im doing"
Department assigments should give 1 to all tasks which players are expected to perform as part of their jobs
By default player can pick lets say 2 of any tasks in which they will have 1
Having 0 in a task doesnt mean physical impossibility to do it, but lets say slow down the time it takes to perform to a crawl and/or add a probability that nothing happens in the end(or we can think up even better ways to fuck with scrubs)
This way you can still be an assistant which can perform surgery and build singulo but only those few and thus you wont be an ingame mary sue which can do everything better than anyone because of your real life experience at the game

Or it can be done through some other ways, but the idea is the same - restrict players ability to be a mary sue
From coding point of view even the simplies of systems which try to do any of that will be abominable nightmare thought, so i wouldnt hope for any soltuino to this
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Re: Round length

Post by Steelpoint » #476894

A skill system is a interesting concept but I what impact that would have on round length is of question, it is also a major discussion point unto itself. Raz has the right idea however.

If we want to try and extend the round, perhaps investigate adding more of a build up to our current antagonists.

For example, perhaps a traitor must first locate a 'dead drop' item that is hidden somewhere on the station, with information on the drops location being given after a RNG timer (hide it behind a verb you need to use to get the item so some random Clown cannot steal the drop), the drop could contain your syndicate objectives and it grants you the code to access your Syndicate uplink (alt, you start with a few TCs (5 or so) and accessing the dead drop will give you more TCs).

Maybe even restructure Traitor/Antag objectives into tiers. Start off the traitor with a low tier objective that is really easy to finish (sabotage the soda machine in the science rec room, cut the APC power to the public tool storage), finishing the low tier objective would unlock your primariy objective and maybe you the rest of your TCs. Or the system grants harder objectives after finishing the last one up to a limit.
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Re: Round length

Post by Razharas » #476896

Its actually fairly simple to add length to any antags - add any kind of progression reward system
Old death-sting lings were removed exactly because powergamers kept recalling the shuttle for hours to absorb more people and unlock more powers
Flat antag rewards means theres no point to wait for anything and you just jam it in from T+0

Traitors can finally start to live up to their name and, instead of factually being double agents, gradually do progressively harder tasks with secret communications with syndicate inbetween to get reward for the previous one and recieve a new task
Lings can just start weaker but add ability to unlock more abilities with more dna absorbtion
Cult can get their blood R&D back with benefits at the cost of harder conversions
Revs can really be merged with traitor as one of the higher difficulty tasks
Same with nuke ops
Wizard shall be removed because its a shit le epic meme xD or at least be reworked from scratch as a concept, maybe merge with cult to be a cult variant with some different mechanics, devil goes to the same place btw if its still a thing
Blob could be much weaker and be a high end high cost conversion ability of some other antag like traitor, sentient desiese(or whatever is it called) or ling
All of this should be spawned when needed instead of round basis, round basis is cancer
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Re: Round length

Post by nullbear » #476935

Oh hey raz, been a while, nice to see you've moved to tg.

Biggest con to weakening antags at round-start is that fucking up once (ie. Being identified) is usually a game-ender for antags as it is.
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Re: Round length

Post by Razharas » #476943

Not sure what you mean moved to tg, i was exclusively a tg coder my entire ss13 experience
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Re: Round length

Post by nullbear » #476951

Maybe. But i vaguely recall you trying to get me to play osu with you or something.

Edit: Nope. That was Razhengetsu or something
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